We've all read or seen something with our own eyes this past week things that made our blood boil.
Here, in the aftermath of a horrendous calamity, the divide between the two main mindsets of our society has never been clearer.
How can it be that one side is overflowing with compassion for the victims, their fellow humans and outrage over the feeble response to this disaster while the other displays nothing but scorn, dismissal and lame excuses?
One side clearly recognizes the value of every member of the tribe while the other is lost in its selfish individuality.
And there it is.
I vs. We.
There is a name for those who fail to display compassion for their fellow human beings, they are called sociopaths.
Yes good citizen these people are mentally ill.
People that don't give a crap about other people are a threat to society. It is these same people that have no idea what socially acceptable behavior is and worse, they could care less.
Okay, I'm off the deep end now. I've put in black and white what has been running through the back of most of your minds all week.
What's wrong with these people! Guess it's time to explain the title.
Ever wonder why we don't just kill one another on sight? There is a contract that predates all written languages known as the human social contract.
Mankind, the king of predators, learned early on that there was safety in number. Humans fared far better working together rather than against one another.
The key ingredients of this unwritten agreement were trust and fair play. Screwing around with another member of the tribe on either point held dire consequences.
The safety of the tribe depended on it. Those that didn't play by the rules were `eliminated'.
This strategy worked fine until tribes got big. So big they could no longer speak with one voice or think with one mind.
Yeah, this is when shared leadership came into play and the rest is a very bloody mess.
Yet here we are thousands of years later and the old rules still apply. Some of us recognize the value of the tribe while others believe in no one but themselves.
This is a major schism within our society. While those who still believe in the value of the tribe are marginalized as being out of touch with reality, these people know that as it goes for the tribe, so it goes for them.
The individualist mindset thinks it is within their power to avoid such titanic forces but even those who set themselves above us are affected when thing go sour.
In a world so full of people it's hard to remember that we're still one species, all members of the same tribe.
If there is a failing in our laws that failure lies in the lack of punishment for anti-social behavior. People that place their own interests ahead of those of the tribe, the welfare of us all are in criminal violation of the oldest known social contract.
How can it be a law if it was never written down? Do we really need a written prohibition against killing? We all instinctively know it's wrong.
In light of the fact that we have not one but many written prohibitions against killing, it's still okay if the freakin' government does it! What's up with that?
So much for written laws!
Without laws that protect society from sociopathic behavior such as laws prohibiting the exploitation of a human by any other, the tribe is left with no way to protect itself from the chaos that lurks just beneath the thin veneer of civilized behavior.
When injustice goes unpunished, when the strong prey upon the weak, the individual will seek the protection of the strongest group they can gain admittance to.
Historically it has been the tribe that protected them. Now the tribe is so large, so diffuse that it seems it is no longer relevant.
So the individual seeks to join the ranks of the sociopaths as the source of their salvation.
This must seem like a lot of psychobabble but we're talking about the very foundation of civilization here, a foundation that is crumbling as we speak because the tribe is doing nothing to prevent it.
Correction, those of you that appreciate the value of civilization are doing everything in your power to insure the concept remains relevant. What the tribe is powerless to (legally) do is weed out the sociopathic behavior that is undermining the very foundation of our civilization.
Trust and fair play. If we fail to restore these two key ingredients to our civilization our society will rip itself to pieces.
And billions will die, needlessly, all for the greed of a few.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner